Service as Awakening: Why Every Human Encounter Can Liberate

In June 1986, at a retreat at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, Ram Dass sat before an audience and opened with a phrase that sounds like a paradox until you stay with it: "I don't like you, but I love you." He was not talking about romance or family squabbles, though those came into it. He was talking about the people who arrive in our lives without invitation, the ones we would never choose as companions, and what it might mean to treat each of them as the material God has placed on our plate. The talk, now circulating as episode 315 of the Here and Now podcast from the Be Here Now Network, rests on one claim that is easy to nod at and hard to live: every act between human beings, from changing a bedpan to saying hello to a stranger at the checkout, can help, serve, or liberate. What follows is an attempt to lay out the reasoning behind that claim, and the caveats Ram Dass attaches to it, so the idea can be tested in ordinary life rather than admired from a distance.

Why does the stance you bring to a relationship matter so much?

Ram Dass begins with a practical observation. When you are with another person, the question of who you think you are and who you think they are shapes nearly everything that follows. That stance decides whether the two of you fall into a drama that divides and leaves you both suffering, or whether the same interaction leaves you lighter. He is careful to say the difference is not in the task itself. Changing a bedpan can be a moment of contraction or a moment of freedom; the act is identical, the stance is not.

This is the heart of what he calls the yoga of service. Most of us think of service as a category of activity: you get a credential so you can serve, you care for your parents, you cook or clean. Ram Dass pushes past that list. He argues that every single interaction between human beings has the capacity to help or liberate, and that the deeper you see this, the less service remains a choice you make. "Then the word service, like the word love, loses its meaning," he says, "because it's not something that you have a choice, I will serve or not, because at that point you have become service."

"Every single act between human beings is an act that has the capacity to help or serve or liberate. And finally at that level you see that all is service."

Ram Dass, Here and Now Ep. 315, recorded at the Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, New York, June 20, 1986 (about 3:05 into the episode)

He also admits the thought runs "very far out," and that is why he wants to be explicit about direction. The point of the talk is not to make the listener feel that every encounter should be a sermon. It is to give a compass, so that when the drama of everyday life pulls you under, you remember which way you were trying to face.

Can God be your only friend?

The most striking story in the excerpt concerns his own guru, whom he calls Maharaj. A young woman who was with Maharaj was suffering over a fickle boyfriend. Maharaj asked her a question that stings and consoles at once: "Don't you realize your only friend is God?" Ram Dass uses the anecdote to show what he means by a relationship that is not trapped in the surface drama. Human companionship is real and valuable, but it is unreliable as a foundation. The deeper friend is the one who does not leave.

He is also frank that the word "God" makes many people wince. For some, it carries childhood wounds or a fear of worshipping something outside oneself, which the spiritual traditions have always warned against as dualism. His answer is to define terms rather than defend them. Quoting the South Indian sage Ramana Maharshi, he offers the line that "God, guru, and self are one and the same thing," and explains that the guru is a doorway you look through, not an idol you stop at.

Ram Dass then describes a practical reason devotion takes relational forms. Human beings relate to children, parents, politicians, lawyers and doctors, and the mind and senses are wired to relate to something. "It's very hard for me to say, 'Open your heart to the void,'" he admits. "It just doesn't turn you on." Devotional practice, singing to Ram or Krishna or speaking to Christ, gives the heart a place to land. The image he uses is precise: devotion "takes your emotional body with you, rather than leaving your emotional body behind," and then carries you through the form into what lies beyond it.

Are spiritual methods traps?

Here the talk turns sharp. Ram Dass says all forms, including gurus, gods, idols, and devotional songs, are methods. They are useful, and they are "ultimately traps if you stop there." His formulation is almost a koan: "All methods are traps. I mean, meditation is a trap. You don't want to end up a meditator, you want to end up free." A good meditator, he says, is a fine thing for this life, but it will not by itself free you. You can be a devoted lover of Christ and still not be free.

The implication is demanding. Methods are meant to be used, not worshipped, and the aim is to become what the method points toward. He acknowledges that in most Western esoteric religions, saying "I am God" or "I am Christ" is treated as presumption, something close to chutzpah. Yet his reading is that these devotional traditions are built on the fact that most people are not going to awaken to their true self in one leap, so they supply an emotional bridge to something beyond themselves. That bridge is "extremely useful as long as you don't get frightened by it." Frightened, here, means mistaking the bridge for the destination.

Where does God live if not in a grandfatherly figure?

Ram Dass is careful about what he means when he says God. He is not thinking of the stern, grandfatherly figure of the Old Testament, and he insists he is not anthropomorphizing. Instead he experiences God as the law, the way, or the harmony of things; as "the formless made manifest into all this form." The word God, in his usage, is a mnemonic, a short label for what cannot be spoken. He notes that the Hebrews, aware of this, wrote it as G-D, because no word can contain it.

He links this to the image of an iceberg, the part of ourselves beneath the surface that we do not yet know. That deepest layer is what he calls one's God self, and he connects it to the Hindu concept of the jivatman, the part of God within oneself. The practical consequence follows directly. If God is everywhere, the question becomes: why am I not seeing it? His answer is that the eyes of the beholder decide what appears. "If you're too hungry, you just see what's edible." Our desires and our level of attention determine which level of reality we are able to perceive.

What role does a father play in your awakening?

Ram Dass offers a personal example of how help can arrive in subtle forms. He describes his relationship with his father, and the way it changed as each of them held different expectations and roles. The excerpt is partial, and the full arc of that story is not in the material available, so it is best not to reconstruct it beyond what he says. What the excerpt does make clear is his method: he looks at a family bond not as a set of fixed positions but as a relationship in which care, need, and expectation are constantly moving. Help that is genuinely useful often does not look like help at all. Sometimes it looks like letting go of what you thought you were supposed to give.

This is where the talk's psychology becomes especially concrete. He is interested in how roles, such as father, son, teacher, or professional, become identities that we cling to. When we attach too tightly to a role, it can block the very service it was meant to support. The question he asks, in various forms, is whether we can play the role fully without getting lost in it.

How do you play your roles without being trapped by them?

The answer, as Ram Dass frames it, is to move from role to encounter. He describes connecting with people at the level of heart and soul, which allows a person to perform a function, like being an office worker, a caregiver, or a parent, while remaining open to the person in front of them. He remarks, with some humor, that he would not necessarily choose many of the people who arrive on his plate for friendship. Yet, he says, "because they're on the plate, they are what has been given to me as a gift by God in order to allow me to come to God." Each experience, in his account, is an opportunity through which one can awaken, and whether that opportunity is used is a matter of choice, which he calls one's karma.

The payoff comes when the roles dissolve enough to see the sacred in the ordinary. Near the close of the excerpt he asks a sequence of questions that function as a practice in themselves: is the Beloved a mother and child in Africa, a blind man in Nepal, a homeless person in New York City? Is it the family, the lover, Christ in distressing disguises, or Maharaj in drag? "You pick it," he says. Then the question turns inward: is it your higher self coming to ask, "Can you love me here too?"

"If you've seen the Beloved, there's nothing that brings you more joy than serving the Beloved. Is the Beloved a mother and a child in Africa? Is it a blind man in Nepal? Is it a homeless person in New York City? ... Is it your higher self coming to ask you, 'Can you love me here too?'"

Ram Dass, Here and Now Ep. 315, Omega Institute, June 20, 1986 (about 49:59 into the episode)

That final question is the working core of the talk. It suggests that service is not a sacrifice imposed on us from outside, but a joy that becomes available once we recognize the one being served. It also suggests that the people we find hardest to love may be the places where our awakening is most waiting for us.

Where to go from here

The talk is dense, and it rewards slow listening. A few practices follow naturally from it. Notice the stance you bring into your next exchange with a difficult person, and ask whether it leaves both of you lighter or more entangled. Pick one repetitive act of service, such as a chore, a shift, or a conversation with a colleague, and try seeing it as an opportunity rather than an obligation. When devotion or meditation begins to feel like a possession, ask whether the method is still pointing you toward freedom. And when a relationship feels impossible, try Ram Dass's question on yourself: what is the Beloved asking of me here?

The recording itself is the best primary source. Listen to the full episode of Here and Now, Ep. 315, from the Be Here Now Network, and let the questions sit with you longer than the answers.